Talk: Challenging Racism and Islamophobia

Speaker: Manzoor Cheema, Founding Member of Movement to End Racism and Islamophobia (MERI)

Islamophobia is a contrived fear or prejudice fomented by the existing Eurocentric and Orientalist global power structure. It is directed at a perceived or real Muslim threat through the maintenance and extension of existing disparities in economic, political, social and cultural relations, while rationalizing the necessity to deploy violence as a tool to achieve “civilizational rehab” of the target communities (Muslim or otherwise). This form of oppression reintroduces and reaffirms a global racial structure through which resource distribution disparities are maintained and extended. (Source: Race and Gender Studies at The University of California at Berkeley).